Craythur's First Blog Or How I Became A Bemused Gamer
By: Craythur
So I thought I'd give this blog thing a try.
Where to start eh? I suppose a first blog should be some sort of introduction. It's only fair that readers know just what sort of fractured mind is behind all this. Let's run with that. If you read this and are remotely interested in reading more let me know in game.
How I became a Bemused Gamer by Craythur.
A group of friends introduced me to my first MMO World of Warcraft two months after it's launch. I played it happily for a few years. I was an end game raider before ZG, AQ, and the original Naxx came along. That meant my Paladin spent far too many hours cleansing fiery debuffs in MC. The raid group I was a member of was quite good. We were well geared and very accomplished at not standing in "The Thing" various PVE bosses would throw at us. I was not L33t, but I played in the company of L33ts. I greatly enjoyed the old Alterac Valley battles prior to the changes that led opposing forces to ride by one another waving on their way to fight enemy NPC's. I miss the days of open world PVP in Tauen Mill and Ashenvale.
All was swell (yes I use that word regularly) until Burning Crusade came along. In one fell strike Blizzard smote our raid alliance. We were built around running 40 character instances.Even doing the 20 man ones had led to problems of "A teams and B Teams" among our membership. Suddenly the endgame included 10 person instance as well on a silly timer. Long story short, the game had changed so we did as well. I was no longer a Raider. I enjoyed much of BC leveling from a casual PVE stand point. WoW PvP was dead to me at this point. Arenas (aka dueling/esport/bring the FoTM classes or don't bother) held no allure. That left me with very little to do at end game. Blizzard didn't have it's hooks in me as it once did so I unsubbed and began to experiment with other games.
Star Wars Galaxy: I love the Star Wars story. So it was a natural first pick after WoW. As it happens I didn't make it past the "research/installation" phase. I got the game mostly installed. But by then I had read enough of Sony, the game changes, and internet chatter to know it wasn't going to be for me. I stopped downloading patches and uninstalled.
Everquest: I couldn't make it past character creation. I suppose it was the graphics.
LoTRO: I pre-ordered and played in the last stages of the beta. Beautiful game. Great story. Awesome community. No really, the people playing on Silverload (the unofficially *older gamer* server) were a real class act. I had a fantastic kinship of casual gamers who celebrated our laid back natures and humor. If my WoW guild had been this friendly I never would have left. I stopped playing right before the first free expansion when my computer melted down. It took some time to get online again. By the time I did my ardor for Lotro had cooled and I never went back. I'm not certain as to why. I think I was already burned out on PVE. I'm still surprised to this day that I've never gone back. It's probably because my Kinship broke up for reasons I missed while offline.
Hellgate London: Shooting zombies and demons with assault rifles, lasers & Techno-magic in a persistent world? I can play without paying a subscription? Oh hell yeah! Lock & load! Remember the Dead but Fight for the Living! ...Wait a minute. What's all this then? Where is the persistent world? Where all all these other players I see in chat? It's hard to have an MMO without the "M's" flagship. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Tabula Rasa: Fun for the first to levels. The point defense public quest events were awesome fights and a great idea. Hang around for awhile and the NPC's would come try to take the base. Good times. The character cloning system looked like an interesting way to try other careers without leveling alts up from ground zero. The rest of the game was just painfully shallow and buggy. When I reached the third zone/quest hub and was STILL having to fight spacepigs and alien monkeys I canceled my account. I think I played for a week all told.
Time passed. I wasn't gaming, but I stayed informed of game related things. My wife was still playing WoW, happily doing Dailies and Heroics. I began to think I was no longer a gamer. In fact, the very idea of gaming at my age started to feel rather silly. Then came something very unexpected. Rumors of WAR...
That's a story for another day.